Given that some of the highest-profile games on the SAM also appeared on every other contemporary computer format - often both 8- and 16-bit - it should come as no surprise that my early days with the machine were spent hoping for SAM conversions of all manner of popular, big name games. Toward the end of its life, hugely influential games like Prince of Persia and Lemmings were converted, essentially as homebrews, and then published by software companies who were no doubt happy they they hadn't been required to invest in development.
In the years since I first joined the SAM Coupé scene, and particularly after joining the Greenford Computer Club, back in 2019, I've been fascinated by other retro computers, such as the Atari 800XL, the Enterprise, and the MSX. The latter I'd had previous experience of via emulating games such as SD Snatcher, Metal Gear, and the Gradius series, but I hadn't realised that it, much like the SAM Coupé, still has a fairly active homebrew scene.
What's particularly interesting about the MSX is that it has screen modes which are remarkably similar to the SAM's MODE 2 (albeit with a separate 'layer' for sprites) and MODE 4 (albeit with a slightly taller screen of 256 x 212 pixels). Thus, it's a machine with a fair selection of games that could, potentially, be converted to the SAM with minimal loss of visual quality. Many of its games that feature scrolling coloured backgrounds do so in 8 pixel jumps so, while it's not especially smooth, it wouldn't be overly taxing for the SAM to accomplish. Games like Metal Gear, where scrolling is kept to a minimum, with most environments being flip-screen, are absolutely ripe for conversion to the SAM, and would only need minor tweaking of the UI to fit the smaller screen: the life bar is the only thing occupying the additional 20 pixel rows at the bottom of the screen in the MSX version. That won't be the first MSX game to appear on the SAM, though...
After completing The Lower Caverns, the coder had planned to tackle something very different before starting work on Manic Mansion. Several options were discussed, including an adaptation of the classic arcade game Phoenix, but something more recent caught his eye as well. Back in 2021, an original MSX homebrew game was self-published (and made available via GitHub) by Santiago Ontañón Villar. Titled Westen House, it's an action adventure horror game, but saying too much more could easily lead to spoilers for the game. Suffice it to say, it's related to a well-known epistolary novel in the horror genre. Westen House is not quite scaled-back Survival Horror - there are weapons to be found, but the player is not obliged to use one of them, and its ammunition is not limited the way it tends to be in the Survival Horror genre - but it's honestly not too far off. I could easily see the same engine being adapted into an MSX demake of Resident Evil.
The screen mode is 256 x 192 pixels, using 16 colours in 8 x 1 pixel attribute blocks (for the backgrounds and UI, at least - the sprites are overlaid, and cheat the requirements), so perfect for MODE 2 on the SAM... but the coder preferred the idea of MODE 4. He contacted the game's creator asking how he'd feel about a SAM Coupé conversion of the game, and permission was enthusiastically granted. With that sorted, he contacted me, asking if I'd like to adapt the graphics... and I was only too happy to jump on board. Tackling an original game, rather than something that's already been ported to every system under the sun, is an exciting prospect.
Now, while an upgraded and expanded version was released in 2022 - Westen House EX - we are currently only planning to adapt the original version. Having access to all the original graphical assets as .PNG files was a real blessing, as it meant I could adapt them directly either on the PC, using Photoshop and/or Aseprite, or port them over to the SAM and work on them in SAMPaint. I quickly settled on the former option, and soon found that Aseprite was far simpler to work with, since it's easier to switch between colours.
Photoshop, meanwhile was ideal for cobbling together screenshot mockups... and here's what the first draft looks like:
I'm rather pleased with these... It's been a while since I last tried adapting, for example, Spectrum graphics to the SAM, but this feels like a marked improvement to me... particularly as a first draft, completed in probably less than two days.
Given that everything on the MSX was block colours on a black background, and this is going to be full colour throughout, there were some aspects of this 'upgrade' that I wasn't looking forward to (not least, things like wooden floor textures), but working in Aseprite made that much easier than it's previously been in Photoshop or SAMPaint. I'm still not fully used to it, but Aseprite could well become my preferred development tool for graphics on the SAM, assuming the coders I'm working with/for are able to accept its output and port it over - and one of them mentioned that he intends to write some tools for common tasks like that.
If not, I can still transfer this kind of thing to a SAM .DSK file as a SCREEN$, via SCADM, as I have done for many projects in the past.
Naturally, I've carried on tweaking the graphics, not to mention fixing errors and oversights that only became apparent when making these mockups... But my intention is to get it to a state that I'm happy with, then leave it alone... at least until the first test build of the game is completed.
The coder still has a lot to do before any of this is of any real use to him, but I've already made a few suggestions, such as multiple colours of each wall type, enlarging the doors so they actually fill the frames (they're about 8 pixels shorter on the MSX to avoid colour bleed), and adding unique, potentially colour-coded doors for the house interior. I can already tell that, for my part, this is going to be a fun project...
...As long as I don't obsess over tiny details, the way I did with The Lower Caverns.
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